Helena Duch Child Psychologist Dr. Helena Duch is a child psychologist with over 10 years of experience nationally and internationally in the areas of childhood education and mental health. She holds a Master’s degree in Developmental Psychology from Teacher’s College – Columbia University, a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from New York University and doctoral degree in Child/School Psychology from New York University. She is a licensed psychologist and a certified school psychologist in the State of New York. Dr. Duch has received training in Family Therapy at the Ackerman Institute for the Family.

Dr. Duch has an appointment at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health as the supervisor for mental health services at the Head Start and Early Head Start program. She has coordinated and supervised mental health services for pregnant women, infants, toddlers, preschoolers and their families at this program for the last five years. She also trains Columbia University public health students and family medicine residents in child development.

Dr. Duch has worked in New York City Public schools, foster care agencies, early intervention settings, Bellevue Hospital and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, providing direct services to children and families. She has expertise in the areas of psychological, neuropsychological and educational assessment, early childhood and bilingual evaluations, consultation and direct intervention with children in group, individual and family therapy.

Dr. Duch is the co-founder of The Baby Doctors, an in-home consultation and evaluation service for New York City’s youngest children (www.thebabydoctors.com).

Internationally, Dr. Duch has worked for UNICEF Maldives on the Early Childhood Development project, helping with the development of a country-wide integrated policy for early childhood services. She helped develop UNICEF’s strategic plan for their sponsored preschool programs and trained local teachers and administrators in the areas of early childhood development, education, assessment and special needs. Dr. Duch worked in Sri Lanka as a part of a task force from Mount Sinai Hospital training first responders in trauma interventions for young children affected by the Tsunami. As early childhood consultant for ChildHope Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Dr. Duch evaluated a training program for Community Day Care Providers developed in the favelas of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

Dr. Duch has extensive background in program evaluation and research. She is a senior evaluation consultant for Owen Consulting Inc., leading large multi-site evaluations of after-school programs in New York City. As part of her appointment with Columbia University, Dr. Duch is currently involved in the evaluation of Getting Ready for School, a parent-child literacy and numeracy curriculum designed for parents of children 4-7 years old. Developed by Open Society Institute and the International Step by Step Association, Getting Ready for School has been implemented in over 20 countries in central Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America. In the US, it is being pioneered at Columbia University Head Start. In 2000, Dr. Duch received a grant from the Federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families to conduct a two-year research study on the mental health of Hispanic Head Start Children and their families.

Since 2007 Dr. Duch has been involved as a content advisor with the Spanish language multimedia company Todobebé Inc. She has written numerous articles on child development topics for their popular website www.todobebe.com and has made several television appearances as child psychology expert in their program ¡Viva la Familia! which airs nationally at the Univision network.

Dr. Duch is a native Spanish speaker, and is fluent in English, French and Catalan. She is competent in Italian and Portuguese.

t. 212.561.0303
email - Hd90@columbia.edu